But second-hand information concerning the toilers can lead to nothing further than measures for the alleviation of their woes. If real fellow-feeling is to be restored, producer and consumer must get acquainted through actual contact. They must share the same life. This immediately suggests, of course, life for the consumer under the pall of factory smoke. But the conditions under which commodities are made ought not to be so hideous as they are. There is no place too beautiful to be the workshop of a human being. Our ideal for the future must be for every man to have a little plot of ground, and to live and to work where he can say:
“I’m glad the sky is painted blue,
And the earth is painted green,
With such a lot of nice, fresh air
All sandwiched in between.”
When the producer finds a place like that, the consumer will be glad to live next door to him.
And is this an idle dream of a Utopia beyond all possibility of realization? Well, there is earth enough surely, and every day the electric cars and telephones are making it possible for us to spread out over the land without getting out of communication with the world. It may be possible for the producer of the future to live next door to the consumer without being very close to him.
Then half, at least, of the machinery which makes the worker an undesirable neighbor is unnecessary, whether we consider his needs or the consumer’s. From the point of view of the latter, this unnecessary machinery is being used in manufacturing abominable trash, or in making articles to take the place of others which were badly made and faded or fell to pieces, or wore out before their time. From the point of view of the worker, much of our modern machinery saves labor which it would be life and health and happiness for him to perform by hand. All the assistance he needs from machinery is a little power to take the place of his muscular energy and to save his strength and vitality for brain work. He wants a machine which shall be his slave as he works out his designs into useful and beautiful articles, not a tyrant which he must “tend” all day long. A small machine is a much better slave than a big one. If the workers should spread themselves out over the country with their small machines, this would not mean the sacrifice of any real good in the present system. Improved methods of transmitting power are making it possible for each community to have a central power plant from which energy may be sent to run the seamstress’s sewing machine, the carpenter’s lathe, the potter’s wheel, and the rug-maker’s loom. Thus the present desire to simplify life and the present dissatisfaction with the flimsiness of the average factory-made article, which create a demand for a smaller and better product, combine with improved means for transportation, for communication, and for transmission of power to make it practicable for small workshops to take the place, to a certain extent, of large factories, and to make it possible for the producer of household stuff to become a desirable neighbor.
The shops that are springing up all over the country in connection with technical schools show the advantages of labor under good conditions. In addition to the students’ workrooms there is usually, in connection with these schools, a shop where men are employed to make furniture and other articles for the institution. The demands of instruction make it possible to equip these shops with apparatus which would otherwise be too costly. Such places offer a man pleasant conditions for work, a stimulus to mental activity, and an opportunity to see the direct results of his labor. I have in mind such a school and shop. There, one day, the girls of the cooking class served orange ice and rolled wafers to the engineer and the carpenter. I felt sure that, good as the ice and wafers were, they tasted better to the carpenter because they were passed on a tray he had made, and to the engineer because he had made the tins on which the wafers were baked. There is a satisfaction in seeing the products of one’s labor in actual use.
Another hopeful sign lies in the fact that illustrated magazines which are published in the interests of the Arts and Crafts movement and of household decoration are spreading knowledge of design and are making it desirable to hire work done by local cabinet makers. In the Northwestern University Settlement, in Chicago, there is good furniture, including a beautiful round table for the reading room, which was made in a small shop after designs furnished by one of the residents.
It is not even enough, however, for the producer and consumer to come into contact. They must have the same interests. These common interests the manual training schools are supplying. Such schools are training the children of the rich to work with their hands. At the same time they are offering an education of more immediate practical value than was the purely cultural education of old, and are for this reason attracting the children of the poor, who used to be put early to work. The young people who are to be the manual laborers of the future are getting their apprenticeship under conditions which give culture and general information. Thus the technical school tends to destroy the class distinction between brain workers and hand workers.
There is, however, a suspicion that some manufacturers, under the cloak of interest in technical education, are advocating the extension of manual training courses for their own selfish purposes, rather than for the general good; that they are seeking to increase the number of skilled workers among whom they may choose, and to make themselves independent of labor organizations. It is fair to the labor organizations to hear both sides in this, as in other matters where there seems to be a conflict of interests between employer and employed. Through the Woman’s Trade Union League, which has branches in most of our large cities, housekeepers may learn the women workers’ side as it is presented by themselves.
There is encouragement also in the revival of the handicrafts. A few people are making articles of household utility because they like the work. These people are living examples of joy in labor. The movement is important, also, because it tends to the establishment of democratic relations. Experience has shown that when a woman whose connections have been entirely with those who shared her ability to buy and to spend becomes seriously interested in some form of handiwork her whole manner of life changes. She is no longer free to participate in purposeless social functions. To her studio teas she is likely to welcome those who are working at her own or at similar crafts without reference to their social position. Thus gradually and naturally and without any sudden severing of relationships she passes from the aristocracy of those who have to the aristocracy of those who do. It may be that in this way real sympathy between classes is to be restored.